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When I think of horrible traffic jams in France, I always picture the scenes from Julio Cortázar's short story "Highway Of The South." However, it's hard to beat Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Week End in that department, with this famous 7-minute-plus tracking shot showing an incredible assortment of European cars. You'll see Citroëns, Panhards, Facel Vegas, NSUs, and much, much more. Thanks to SOS10 for the tip!
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The other day I caught a glimpse of a dark blue Volvo Amazon parked just down the street from the '42 Pontiac Torpedo . I didn't have time to photograph it, but since we've had only one Amazon so far in this series, I made a mental note to get back and shoot this rare Swedish gem as soon as I could. Today I returned with my camera, and... holy crap! That's not an Amazon- it's a Peugeot 403! Yes, mere weeks after providing a Citroën GS for us, Alameda has produced another vintage French car for our enjoyment. My research indicates that 1960 was the last year for this style of hood emblem on the 403, and the turn signal lights suggest that it's a 1958-1960 car. Of course, this could be a rare Tahiti- or Ivory Coast-built car, in which case all bets are off (though the yellow-on-black plate and early letter combo indicates 1963 or 1964 as the first year this car was registered in California). You Peugeot experts are invited to help us out here. The California sun has...
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With our current obsession with French cars in general and Citroëns in particular, we hear a lot about Peugeots in former African colonies of France (and, yes, we know that Nigeria is a former British colony, which makes the new 504s you can buy there even cooler). But what about French Indochina, the crown jewel of the erstwhile French Empire? Long after the Viet Minh gave the French the boot, Citroëns continued to roam the streets of Hanoi and Saigon; the photo above comes from this batch of 1968-69 photos . And they're still there ; nowadays it's possible to tour Hanoi in a clean-looking Traction-Avant. Thanks to SOS10 for the tip! [Luxury Travel Vietnam]
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The plan was to have the PCH superpower whose vehicle won yesterday's Choose Your Eternity challenge pit one of its finest, most hellish machines against an offering from the remaining PCH superpower, France. Unfortunately, the Gawker poll thingy appears to have been designed by Joe Lucas , and the 2-0 tally in favor of the Austin Gipsy seems even shakier than Kennedy in Illinois, 1960, or Bush in Florida, 2000. Anyway, it's been a month since our last all-French matchup , so let's just postpone the showdown between Italy, Britain, and France for another day. Back when I was a young college hoon with a lifetime-unemployment-ensuring art/English double major, my state-funded university went ahead and took a bunch of California taxpayers' money and bought Yale's English Department. They got the works, right down to the office furniture and some French dude named Jacques Derrida . Suddenly, being an English major meant that you had to get serious about literary theory in...
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When I go to the self-service wrecking yard, as I did last weekend, it's not often that I draw a total blank when trying to identify an oddball car among the ranks of the steel organ donors. I play a little game in which I stand far enough away that I can't read any badges and try to guess the manufacturer. This car almost had me... until I spotted the three-lug wheels. Renault! Turns out this is a Renault 16 , a car I've never seen on an American street in all my years on this earth. Check out that somewhat space-inefficent front-wheel-drive setup! I can only imagine the just-won-the-lottery sensation an American Renault 16 owner would feel upon stumbling across this once-in-a-lifetime jackpot. Jump like his heart to see the rest of the photos. galleryPost('JunkRenaul16Top', 6, 'Junked 1969 Renault 16 Part 1'); galleryPost('JunkRenaul16Jump', 11, 'Junked 1969 Renault 16 Part 2');
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